Johnston , R.M 


Significance of Bull Run. 


E 

472.18 

.J646 

1913 


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The 

Significance of Bull Run 


By R. M. JOHNSTON 


Reprinted from 
INFANTRY JOURNAL 
September- October 
1913 

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Washington 

1913 





















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The Significance of Bull Run. 


By Professor R. M- Johnston. 

HE United States have never suffered one of those great 



military reverses, like Jena or Sedan, that shake the 


A foundations of national existence, that modify national 
thought, and that generations later still bring a blush to the face 
and a qualm to the heart of the lover of his country. Bull Run 
has been, as yet, our nearest approach to anything of the kind. 
It was more discreditable to us than Jena was to Prussia, than 
Sedan was to France, and it revealed dangers commensurate with 
those which those two disasters revealed ; but it was a family 
affair, it was an incident in a political program, and it did not 
bring ruin to the state. Steadily minimized by all who were 
responsible for it, and not understood by the general public, it was 
quickly set aside as one of the disagreeable family occurrences 
about which the least said is the soonest mended. 

But to turn over once more the reports of those who fought 
there, to jog along the Warrenton turnpike where the fugitives 
scurried in mad retreat under the spur of Kemper’s shells, to 
reconnoiter the fords of that ditch-like stream that cost McDowell 
so many efforts to cross, all this makes one’s mind vividly alive to 
the hideous mistakes, the wanton throwing away of human life, 
all the military inefficiency and political ineptitude that marked 
the first battle of the Civil War. Let us see how its significance 
may fairly be estimated as we look back upon it at the present 
day. 

What in military terms was the value of those two armies 
of 30,000 men each that met at Bull Run : as to mobility ; the 
higher command ; staff ; organization ; discipline and cohesion ; 
materiel; tactics? The percentage of efficiency under each one 
of these heads was extraordinarily low, under some of them 
almost nil. In other words, a small force, properly efficient in 
every respect, say one brigade with one battery, under a general 

*Assistant Professor of History, Harvard University. Chairman of 
the Military History Committee of the American Historical Association. 


The Significance of Bull Run. 

trained to maneuver a brigade, could have done almost anything 
it pleased on the field of Bull Run. Such, at all events, is the 
impression that a study of the battle creates. 

Assuming this or something like it to have been the case, an 
important deduction inevitably follows. When the Civil War 
broke out, the so-called army of the United States amounted to less 
than 17,000 men. These troops were dispersed, a company here 
and a company there, mostly in the Western territories, holding 
distant outposts against the Indians and policing the plains. In 
fact, for purposes of war, there was then, very much as to-day, no 
army ; all the regular infantry that could be scraped together for 
McDowell, on three months’ notice, amounting to two battalions 
only. Of these one consisted of three hundred marines who were 
enlisted on the 1st of July and sent into battle twenty days later. 
Napoleon in his most furious moments would have hesitated at 
spilling blood and spoiling regiments in such a way as that ! 

Have we ever sufficiently considered what would have hap- 
pened in 1861 had the United States possessed not a bloated 
military establishment but a little army in the real sense of the 
word, say 60,000 to 100,000 men? In the latter case it is clear 
that we would have possessed a safe and cheap insurance against 
a civil war, against the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives, 
against the loss of hundreds of millions of property, against 
economic depression, almost bankruptcy, against what some 
modern writers argue was an actual reduction of the national 
vitality. For with 100,000 men enrolled, it is probable that from 
25,000 to 30,000 regulars could have been collected with some 
promptness and sent to Richmond, to New Orleans, and to such 
other southern cities where conditions seemed most dangerous. 
Any seditious tendencies would have been stamped out long 
before effective military resistance could have been organized. 
With a total of no more than 60,000 men, this might not have 
been possible, but at all events the administration would have 
been able to give McDowell a division of 8,000 to 10,000 regulars ; 
and that might have made of Bull Run and of the Civil War a 
very different story. 

That McDowell ever succeeded in marching his army twenty- 
five miles to Centreville, and that he was then able to throw its 
right wing another ten miles around the Confederate left at Stone 
bridge, the most commonplace of maneuvers for an efficient army, 
stands out as the one striking achievement of the whole cam- 


The Significance of Bull Run. 


paign. Although several of his regiments faced considerable 
losses and behaved creditably, it is no exaggeration to say that, 
as a whole, his infantry was wretched. How could it be other- 
wise with the men three months or less enrolled, with the regi- 
mental officers mostly elected and so inefficient or cowardly that, 
when the 12th New York broke under the first Confederate vol- 
ley at Blackburn’s Ford, it was not possible to find a single officer 
to rally the men. There were some brave officers among the 
volunteers, of course, but even those who stuck to their work 
were not for that reason valuable; witness the Michigan major 
who on being ordered into the woods with his battalion adopted 
the square formation so as to run no chances with the enemy’s 
cavalry ! 

When that infantry was first deployed against Evans’ line 
north of the Warrenton pike, Burnside’s brigade, although 
strongly supported by artillery, remained hopelessly stuck for 
over an hour at from 500 to 600 yards of a line of about 800 
muskets. It was so used up by this experience, that when the 
enemy was eventually driven off by artillery fire, Burnside’s men 
promptly retired into the woods “to replenish ammunition,” and 
remained there comfortably during the rest of the day. If this 
could happen at 500 or 600 yards, it can be realized how hard a 
question Jackson asked the brigades of Porter, Franklin, and Wil- 
cox when he planted his line of guns and muskets at only half 
that distance behind the crest of the Henry hill. 

With such an army and such a problem there was apparently 
only one thing to do. The infantry could not fulfil its normal 
role for lack of offensive power. The artillery, therefore, must 
perform the infantry’s part. That was why those two gallant 
batteries of regulars, Griffin’s and Ricketts’, notwithstanding the 
protests of their commanders, were thrust straight out at the 
Confederate line on the Henry hill, to plough a hole through if 
the thing could be done. The thing could not be done, however, 
for a master of tactics stood in the way like a stone wall, in a 
beautifully judged position; and what happened was that a single 
volley from the 33d Virginia mowed down the horses and men 
of the two batteries so that they never fired another shot. And 
things require, especially under modern conditions, more careful 
why was all this? Why were all these wrong things done, all 
these good lives thrown away? Because the United States did 
not carry out the simple and fundamental duty of maintaining a 


The Significance of Bull Rnn. 


properly equipped and instructed army of not less than 60,000 
men. 

In all the maze of technical complexities that go to make up an 
efficient military organization, perhaps the most delicate and 
critical in its adjustment is that of the higher command. Few 
things require, especially under modern conditions, more careful 
preparation and more practise. Needless to say that McDowell’s 
army suffered severely in this respect. Some of the incidents 
that have come down to us are almost more grotesque than 
pitiful. Thus on the very afternoon that McDowell had, after 
a thousand efforts, got his army fairly started on its march to 
Centreville, we find him hurrying back in person to Washington 
to hang about the platforms of the station enquiring for a couple 
of batteries of artillery that had gone astray. Two days later he 
is starting on an important reconnaissance, but his adjutant gen- 
eral and his chief engineer are both more interested in going off 
in another direction, and so leave their general to his own devices. 
The orders of McDowell, of his staff, of his divisional and brigade 
commanders, are all given with confusion, promiscuously. There 
is no proper staff system so that at the critical moment no orders 
reach the troops, or else orders are issued by anybody who is 
minded to do so, even by civilians like that energetic person, Gov- 
ernor Sprague of Rhode Island. Chaos and the paralyzing of an 
army’s action could go no further. 

Organization was non-existent or defective. On the very 
morning of the battle, Beauregard became conscious that his 
army, which was merely divided into brigades, could never be 
handled without a divisional or even a corps grouping, so he sud- 
denly started scattering into the order he was dictating to Major 
Whiting the word “division,” as though the word could create the 
thing! That order is a curiosity in military history; it is prob- 
ably one of the worst that was ever written by a commanding 
general — whidh is saying a good deal. The Federal army was, 
on paper, better off than the Confederate, in that it had a divis- 
ional organization ; but Bull Run was to prove how much theoret- 
ical knowledge and practical experience are necessary to make 
such an organization work. 

Our army at the present day, when we consider the problems 
that may be set before it, is relatively little larger than that of 
1861. A wave of uninformed and sentimental pacifism tends, 
quite 1 1 logical ly , to keep its numbers down to the danger point, 
and below. Nothing seems so difficult nowadays as to get people 


The Significance of Bull Run. 


to keep their heads and not go to extremes ; and it really becomes 
a question whether a Prussian Junker or a Californian pacifist is 
the greater danger to civilization. European countries arm mil- 
lions of men whom they could never employ in active operations, 
and create a condition of international nightmare ; while we prefer 
to remain unarmed and not to insure against disaster, trusting to 
our size, to our geographical situation and to sheer luck. Yet 
with an army deliberately kept unfit to go anywhere or do any- 
thing, the lurid unwisdom of our press, and the haste and irre- 
sponsibility of our masses may plunge us almost any day into a 
formidable conflict. We happily do not require millions of 
soldiers. We have shown in the present phase of our history that, 
as nations go, we are reluctant to conquer, averse to annexation. 
Yet we have military problems of all sorts confronting us, as some 
of us realize; and the pity of it all is that many of them would 
cease to be problems were we able to mobilize at short notice no 
greater field force than 150,000 regulars, scientifically organized 
and commanded. As it is, something even worse than Bull Run 
may be our lot when we are next called on to face the military 
ordeal. Its responsibility will not lie at the door of our soldiers, 
any more than that for the first great defeat of the Civil War lay 
at the door of McDowell and the handful of gallant officers who 
tried so hard with him to achieve the impossible. 




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